5.9.21 1 John 4:7–21
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 9 This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? 21 This then is the command we have from him: The one who loves God should also love his brother.
All You Need is Love, And You Have Plenty of It in Jesus
In October of last year a funeral home in Michigan had received a seemingly dead body from the hospital, only to find out she was actually alive! Imagine the surprise! Nowadays we thought we had accurate ways of determining whether someone is dead or not by monitoring a heartbeat and brain waves. But even that’s not entirely accurate.
What about in Christianity? How can you tell if someone is SPIRITUALLY alive or dead? We can’t see the soul, but nonetheless there are some visible things to look at as pretty good evidence to see if someone is alive or not. John writes, Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
John goes back to BIRTH for LIFE, and then life for love. When the Holy Spirit enters the soul through the implanting of the Gospel in Word and Baptism, spiritual life begins as someone is brought to faith and grows in faith. As a baby comes out of the womb and cries and breathes and learns how to walk and talk, so a Christian comes from the womb of God’s grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus and learns how to LOVE.
Being BORN is different than being CREATED. If an artist creates a piece of art - it might REFLECT his wisdom or his skill and give you a little bit of or even a lot of insight into what he is like, but it doesn’t take on his very nature or take on his DNA. But when someone is BORN of God, then it is saying that we receive more than creation from the outside - we have the very characteristics and nature of God as God lives in us!
Imagine the human being, created by God, but having an emptiness in the soul, designed specifically to have life, to have the Holy Spirit living in him or her, like gasoline in a gas tank. Throughout his or her life she is trying to find purpose, trying to find origin, trying to find meaning, to fill that empty hole in his or her soul. He seeks it through a job or money. She seeks it through a marriage or a relationship. But the emptiness remains. The void is being filled with stuff that doesn’t make us run right. No matter what he’s achieved, it doesn’t bring contentment. No matter how much entertainment is sought, it doesn’t fill the void. The big picture, origin and destiny remain an enigma, until the Holy Spirit comes in and fills the emptiness with Jesus. Then you know where your life comes from and what your life is for. NOW there is life. Now there is origin. Now there is purpose. This is what you were born again for. You’ve found your family in Christ.
Just recently we had an adopted member of our congregation who was given a gift from Ancestry.com. So he was able to find and meet his actual birth father in the process and meet some of his half sisters as well. It opened up a whole different family background to him. It illustrates to me what John is talking about here, but in an entirely positive way.
One of the greatest hockey players of all time was Gordy Howe. Yet many people don’t know that he also had several sons who played hockey, one by the name of Mark, who also made the NHL Hall of Fame. It was entirely natural for him to play hockey, so it seemed. This is what God expects of us, as we are baptized into His blood and as we partake of the body and blood of the One who died for us. It’s as if we are now naturally going to be different because of the new birth that we have with Christ.
But there’s a secondary aspect that is needed for this love to really grow inside of someone born of God. We have to know what this means and what is involved to be born of God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Think back to the man who found his birth father and sisters through Ancestry.com. He had a choice. Did he want to find out about them or not? Did they want to be found? He decided that he did. Tentatively he made contact via Facebook. He wanted to find out more about his physical family, even though it may have been a little risky. He went and visited them and actually talked with them.
Shouldn’t there be a natural desire for you to know God when you are baptized into His family? How can you live to your potential if you don’t know who God is? How can you know what living a Christian life is if you don’t get to know His family either? So what does that mean? I should go to the SOURCE. I should open up my Bible, the revealed Word of God, and find out more about Him, so I know who I AM too! I should go to where His family meets and get to know them better too. How many are there who have been baptized but never take the time to seek and find the God who washed them clean? So they look at sin and death in the world and they assume all kinds of nasty things about God. Others assume that everyone who goes to church are a bunch of hypocrites and judgmental yuppies. They have no real clue!
What is THE defining characteristic that John wants us to KNOW about God? God is love. 9 This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. First and foremost, John wants us to know that God is love. What a great thing! God could be anything He wanted to be. He could be a dictator or a bully. He could be petty or indifferent. But He’s not! He’s LOVE! That is the defining characteristic of God. It is what He IS.
But what is love? John doesn’t just leave “love” out there undefined as a feeling or an emoji or two hands held together in the shape of a heart. He doesn’t just let us determine for ourselves what we THINK love is or how love acts. “I don’t think a loving God would . . .” No. It is defined in a specific person and a specific place with a specific action.
What is it? It is that God could not bear to see us die in our sins, condemned to hell. Love is God crashing into our world through the virgin Mary, with the angels singing to the shepherds at night, and saying, “I’m going to do something about your sins. I’m going to do something about death. I’m going to do something to earn your forgiveness and to rescue you.” God is lovingly active. And what is it? “I’m going to send my Son to SUFFER for you and DIE for you on a cross.” So when we think of love defined, we think of action and we think of atoning sacrifice. And as I mentioned the other week, atonement means covering. Jesus came to cover our sins with His bloody death and to make us look DIFFERENT - to look HOLY in His sight. This is love defined.
So what does this mean for us? My God is love! My family isn’t perfect, but my family is forgiven! My family knows how to forgive! My family is built on love and sacrifice! My family has a loving Father and a sacrificial Son and Savior! This could be a great thing! I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son that he had through his maid through an affair. When the truth finally came out, Schwarzenegger was able to have a relationship with his son, and his son seemingly wanted a father. He wanted to follow in his father’s steps. He tried to become a bodybuilder when he found out who he was, and he turned out pretty similar to Arnold. It’s petty in comparison to what we have! We don’t have a bodybuilding unfaithful father who tried to keep our relationship secret. We have a perfect, merciful, heavenly, and forgiving Father, with a loving and sacrificial Son and Brother in Christ who wants to have a relationship with us.
How do we live? Dear friends, (literally translated, “loved ones”) if God loved us so much (literally - in this way), we also should love one another. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? 21 This then is the command we have from him: The one who loves God should also love his brother. Anyone can say “I love God.” If it means I throw a few prayers His way, sing Him some songs, listen to the Bible once in a while, I’m down with that. I can do that. That doesn’t take too much work. But John points you to the guy or gal next to you, the one who snores. The one who is obnoxious. The one who is needy. The one who complains about doing his chores. The one who just can’t seem to get his act together. The one who says hurtful things once in a while and makes your life pretty hard. He says, “There! Love THAT guy!”
I don’t have to crucify myself on a cross for the sins of the world. I don’t have the call to raise people from the dead or perform miracle cures. I don’t have to be God or Messiah. But that doesn’t mean I don’t make smaller and less painful sacrifices. That doesn’t mean God can’t work through me. And it’s those loving little sacrifices that are so different from the mindset of the world. This is what I’m born to do.
It’s so cleansing to think this way and live this way. Think of the single person, waiting for someone to love him or her. Think of the one who is locked inside a world of fantasy, looking at the world on a computer screen day by day. What are they looking for? Television will picture the romantic, the man with flowers and the charming personality, or the woman who is funny and outgoing. Facebook will show people that are active and happy, while they seem to be doing nothing but sitting at home and being lonely. Nobody is there to sweep them off their feet or give them a hug. Nobody invites them out to the bar. They live their lives aimlessly on the Internet, seeking a place in life as they scroll from person to person. Their life doesn’t feel worth living.
But do you see how John changes this? How Jesus changes this? Life is about using your time and energy to make sacrifices for people and give them what they need. You live your life OUTSIDE of yourself for OTHERS, instead of INSIDE yourself worrying about what others are doing for YOU. Instead of waiting for someone to come to you, go to them as Jesus came to you. You think about your spouse or your children. What can I sacrifice for them? It can be your parents, your neighbors, or your fellow Christians here at church.
And here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be FUN or ENJOYABLE. IT’s not about ENTERTAINMENT. It doesn’t have to be easy or convenient. Oftentimes it is not. It’s being painfully patient with someone who is complaining and lazy. It’s putting in time and effort to put food on the table or fix a broken car. If they need food, you bring them some food. If they need prayers, you get on your knees and pray. If they need your patience, then give it to them. Get medicine for them. Buy groceries for them. Make their lunches. Rub their feet. Go to their games. Encourage them in their lives. Invite them to church. Pray for them. Tell them of Jesus. Whatever they need. Loving your brother isn’t just a philosophy. It’s a bread and butter type of life. It’s nothing romantic at all. But when you live this life of love when you are making sacrifices for people then you become vestiges of Jesus to them, in order for them to see Jesus through you and in you. When you go to bed tired and exhausted, you know you’ve lived a day of love.
And maybe that’s why God hates divorce. Maybe that’s why He wants us to settle matters with each other, willing to suffer an injustice, apart from the court system. When you give up on someone or abandon someone that you were supposed to stick with, that’s not love. The worst advice you can hear from today’s gurus, to examine the people in your life that suck the life out of you, who are always demanding and who never seem to give, and they tell you to get rid of them. What if Jesus did that with us? What kind of love would that be?
I now see my life as one of crucifixion for those who are in my life. I want to make sacrifices for them. Take time for them. I have to sacrifice my sinful and lazy nature that doesn’t want to live outside of me. Do things for them that will bless them. I want to put them first. I want them to be forgiven. I want them to repent of their sins, find forgiveness at the cross, and be in a good relationship with Jesus. I don’t want to hate any of them. I don’t want to ignore them or do nothing for them when they need my help. I don’t want to hold grudges towards them. I don’t want to live a selfish or a lazy life. I am here to love people, even if that love causes me pain and heartache.
I remember going to college, I got a job in the kitchen with Chef and Mrs. Hanke. I enjoyed my job. They hired me to a position that was really pretty easy. I didn’t have to stay overtime like some of the other college students. I could leave at a set time. The Hankes were especially kind to me because they liked my father, and they told me as much. I appreciated that and enjoyed their kindness, thanks to my dad.
I think that illustrates how we are called on to live. You’ve had a God who has been miraculously good and kind to you. He’s given you life. He’s shown you love. He’s given you purpose. You have people in your life that need love. They need kindness and forgiveness. They need your time. They need your effort. They need your love. What can you do to show them what love truly is, what life is, who God is, to share the life you’ve been given and be the person you were born to be? All you need is love, and you have plenty of it, in Jesus. Amen.
